What games influenced you the most when choosing a career in game development?
polycounter lvl 8
So, I've recently been setting my first steps into the games industry, and looking back, I've noticed that sadly, the biggest game franchises in the history of gaming so far, all started when I was still a kid, playing them. Of course, a lot of them had a big influence on my decision to pursue a career in game development, some more than others.
A good example of this, for me personally, would be the Uncharted series, the half life games, the counter-strike games and, of course, star wars: battlefront 2. Obviously there were lots of other games that influenced this decision on my part, but I'm not going to bore you with the list.
What I think would be fun to find out is the top three games for each of you that influenced you the most when choosing a career in game development.
for me it is:
Star Wars Battlefront 2
Uncharted: Drake's Deception
Assassin's Creed
A good example of this, for me personally, would be the Uncharted series, the half life games, the counter-strike games and, of course, star wars: battlefront 2. Obviously there were lots of other games that influenced this decision on my part, but I'm not going to bore you with the list.
What I think would be fun to find out is the top three games for each of you that influenced you the most when choosing a career in game development.
for me it is:
Star Wars Battlefront 2
Uncharted: Drake's Deception
Assassin's Creed
Replies
Second up would have to be Sonic. That hedgehog was their all throughout my childhood and I've stood by him though the worst and his now uprising. Bright colors and fast platforming is not something too common now a days..
Last up I guess would be a tie. A mix of Outrun and Halo. Yeah I know its a odd combo. Outrun for its great environments(original and Outrun 2) and halo for its immersive world and great gameplay
then: Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee. changed my art forever.
When I had my C64 and my PC I always wanted to make something that tells an interactive story or features a world to explore. Escaping into a digitial world that allowed you to interact with it and with its characters is just great. And that's why I still love games like Skyrim so much. I hope some day in the future I manage to work on a title like Skyrim, or one of the Bioware RPGs. But for now I'm having too much fun at my current job.
Mass Effect 2
Majoras Mask
These 3 sealed my fate completely for a many reasons
This is the one that made me thought "I want to make games too".
Those games pretty much solidified my desire to create environments.
Counterstrike
Every game by R*/DICE
The first time I KNEW I wanted to make games for a living instead of just playing them all day was when playing Zelda Ocarina of Time. Roaming around that world, especially Hyrule field for the first time had me awe struck. I went from, I want to play video games all day! To, I want to build worlds like these that people can escape to for hours and hours of enjoyment.
At the time I had no idea what it took to make a video game, what an artist was, or any of that as I was like 12? or some shit. But I knew I wanted to create the worlds I got lost and fell in love with. And so that was my goal and here I am today
Importing custom skins was so damn easy that you just couldn´t resist making your own content.
But it was Half-Life 1 that really got me into thing. Found my self looking at the files in its game directory only to discover worldcraft editor being there. Than countless hours of my life were spent in that editor.
Than it was seeing mods like natural selection 1 that got me thinking about making textures and models for games and missing.
Always been a huge fan of SW and jim henson films like the dark crystal for instance.
I was drawn to games rather than film and TV because, those world in video games could last you a lifetime, whereas the worlds in movies, only last about 2 hours, then i go kicking and screaming back to my dull reality, where Wookiees aren't my best friend
That's an interesting way to see it. Originally I was drawn more to film because a good movie you can watch in 30 - 40 years from now, but try getting a good game to run on old hardware... makes me wonder if my old 486 PC still works
Those are the three that got me firmly into game editing, even if the actual games aren't necessarily the ones that have influenced me the most (except Quake, which is still in my all-time top 10 games).
Hard to say for actual influence otherwise, probably Metroid, Deus Ex... there would be so many to name.
+1, Deus Ex is the most amazing game I have ever played. I think HR and Dishonored came pretty close to its level though, which is awesome after all these years (Possibly an exaggeration since I first played Dx1 in 2009 I think).
2nd I'd have to say Oblivion, not because it's a very good game, but purely because it got me started with playing around with construction kits. Kinda cool that a mod I released when I was 13 is still on the old planetelderscrolls website.
3rd... Planescape: Torment. Although that's more inspiration to be a writer more than a game designer :poly124:
i got into modding Q3, and then half life due to my then love of DBZ, so i joined a DBZ mod for half life. and i started making other characters for jedi academy.
Cinematics that were 10years ahead of their time and an amazing, incredible, godly map editor sealed the deal for me. Even though I didn't know a lick of 3D back then, I kept on making map after map with the eventual goal of making a map with *gasp* custom models.
The story was fantastic (for an RTS) but more importantly it built a world. The first game that made me 'get' a world, see how it would work and immersed me in it to where I could suspend my disbelief.
The control was tight, the level of entry low and the skill ceiling high with a bursting modding and competitive scene.
I could gush about that game for hours...
Most of Blizzard games, but this one is most significant. W3, the bridge between my childhood an adulthood
Also, my first RPG, ALbion (RIP Blue Byte). The rich alien world just blew my mind. It had substance and artistic fidelity.
It doesn't really seem like almost 15 years ago, y'know...?
The sheer fact that there was life on the other side of the screen just blew me away.
From Mario to Mortal Kombat 1 to Wolfenstein, Doom, Heretic, Police Quest, Gabriel Knight, Prince of Persia (1,2), Prehistoric and even Fury of the Furries
Later on major inspirations were
GTA, MGS and Final Fantasy
Actually probably before I even started playing games, I loved legos and lincon logs. I would use blankets and anything I could find to build bases for my Star Wars and GI Joes. My backyard was endor and when it snowed... oh man it was magic... It was like the whole world was covered in clay and begging to be twisted into some kind of base or fort. Where I grew up it gets dark at 4:30 and I got home from school at 3:30 so I had an hour to go nuts in the show and often had to be dragged back inside.
I didn't get back into editing until Half-Life and Unreal Tournament came along. I got into mods and dabbled with characters and weapons a bit, textures and some simple code and I was hooked. Suddenly there where tons of people that had the same bazaar interest to make weird and cool characters and frag each other.
Then just about every PC game that shipped came with tools and ways to tweak it and I went from game to game seeing how they did things and making custom content. Every Unreal based game, Star Craft, Jedi Knight, Dawn of War, FarCry... There where so many I have trouble remembering them all.
When piracy started to become an issue and places started locking things down a bit more especially when things started to shift to the consoles, the pool of editable games grew really small for a while. Then the major engines started being released on their own so you could build and create without having to tweak a game.
Legend of Zelda
Also Fire emblem and the first Fable.
definatly!
was scanning the first page and worried there was no wc3 going on, good that its one the second page
i couldnt really play well, so i started making maps. but only with ingame models it sucked, so i started making my own.
so yeah, great read guys, thanks for the responses! anyone else? ^^
Quakeworld
Marathon
The favelas mission in particular.
Oh, and Halo CE of course.
Started tinkering with level creation with Quake 1 and Quark
Some various GB games I had on emulator on PC, I would go in to the "code" and change things around, felt cool bro.